


hyperreal

by nights



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Artificial Intelligence, Assassins & Hitmen, Cybernetics, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Slow Burn, author makes up electrical engineering as she goes along, corporate dystopia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28257582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nights/pseuds/nights
Summary: Sokka gets another wave of déjà vu, after the credits have been transferred and the man pulls his credits key out of the slot — when he yanks his hood up, hunching his shoulders a little. It’s uncanny, really, Sokka’shadto have seen him somewhere —“Are you sure we haven’t met?” Sokka asks, and the man stops with one hand propping open the door.He looks back at Sokka for a moment, netic eye glinting brilliant, LED yellow. He opens his mouth, and hesitates, then decides.“Yeah, I’m sure.”---Sokka's always dreamed of becoming a cybernetics engineer. He wants to make people's lives better, easier. When he lands the coveted internship at Sozintech, he thinks he's finally made it — until he finds an underbelly even darker than suspected.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 45





	1. prologue - gonna be you and me

**Author's Note:**

> hello! and welcome to my next wip that will likely languish unfinished for quite some time. i've written and rewritten the outline for this like five times now, but i'm pleased with the prologue so i'm posting it.
> 
> i'm going to add to the tags as the story progresses, but the rating and archive warnings will remain the same.
> 
> fyi, the prologue takes place several years before the events of the main story. the prologue takes place when they're around high school age, and the main story takes place when the characters are young adults.

A seat, there — he can’t believe it. Sokka slides onto the hard plastic bench, settling in as the metrorail pulls away from the station. There’s a familiar mechanical hum as the tunnel outside slips into a high-speed blur. Sokka stares out the window for a moment, running his fingernail over the graffiti scratched into the plexiglass: characters for curse words. He’d said one of them at the dinner table, once, only to have his dad wash his mouth out with soap. Sokka hadn’t said it again — at least not within his dad’s earshot.

It’s a miracle Sokka got a seat, what with the press of people in the car, gripping handlebars and swaying as they all hurtle through the tunnel together. He studies them as he tucks his scuffed headphones into his ears; they’re all like him and Katara and his dad, people that look familiar even though he’s never met them before. Sure, maybe their clothes are a little frayed at the hems, a little hole here and there that’s been darned, but they’re from the street level, just like him. They only had to take a short flight of stairs to get down to the metrorail system, that warren of tunnels underneath the city sprawl — not like those stuffy, buttoned-up people who lived up higher, who had to take one of the express elevators to get all the way down here.

They never really took the metrorail anyways, preferring the accessibility and on-demand service of shuttles and called-cars. Sokka had taken a shuttle a few times, those rare occasions he’d needed to see a specialist instead of his appointed pediatrician, but he’d never been in a called-car. He imagines it smells like nice leather. Maybe money.

Sokka flicks through his cell, looking for a new playlist — his music algorithm hadn’t been delivering the way it usually does, and his latest serving of recommended songs was no good. _What’s the point of all these stinkin’ algorithms if they can’t even give me the good stuff? You’d think that with all that data they’d know me a little better._ Sokka thinks that maybe one day he’ll make a better one, a more useful one.

In the meantime, he picks something with a cool cover image and listens idly. He sneaks a quick peek at the man sitting across the aisle from him. _Cool netic._ It glints a little where it peeks out from under the man’s sleeve, dark meteorite fibers woven between optic cables. It must have been expensive, but it looks like the man’s investment paid off; when the man pinches his metallic fingers around his backpack zipper to tug it open, the hand moves as naturally as if it were made of flesh. Sokka looks back at his phone, careful not to be caught staring. He’s a lot of things, but he’s not rude.

Sokka stifles a yawn. It’s late; the suns had set long before Sokka trudged down into the rail station. Cybernetics club had run long.

The train slows, whirring and whining, and then the high-speed car pulls into the station. A smooth, ambiguously feminine voice announces the station name; Sokka can’t quite make it out over the beat in his headphones, but it doesn’t really matter, because he’s nowhere near his stop. He has a ways to go.

People filter out, then filter in. More of the same street-level dwellers, and a smattering of people who look like they might live a few stories higher. Or perhaps they’ve been lucky enough to snag a work allotment a few districts over, or at the university. Sokka likes to watch them, and wonder, and think about which of them he might be one day. Some have netics — none quite as cool as the fancy one Sokka had snuck a look at — but most don’t. Sokka doesn’t think he’d want one. He likes his body just the way it is, thank you very much. _Well, maybe a little beefier, but Dad says that’ll happen when I get older. Hopefully._

Sokka glances up again, peering around the car, and his eyes land on a fish out of water. He’s a strange sight, this guy: dressed in sleek clothes, all stiff black bisonwool and red kashmir. He looks like he was _born_ in the sky, with hair combed back into a tight, orderly ponytail, a sharp jaw, and lips pressed into a terse line.

 _Wonder how he got stuck taking the rail._ Sokka forces himself not to wrinkle his nose. _Probably thinks he’s better than us. He certainly looks it._

The guy looks young, not much older than Sokka, definitely still in underschool. He’s… kind of cute, now that Sokka is spending a little time looking at him. The guy looks lost in thought, looking down at something on his cell, so Sokka figures it’s safe to study him for a moment. He’s got inky black hair, long lashes. Sokka wonders if that hair is as smooth at it looks.

The boy turns, shifting to let someone shoulder past as they slip out into the next station. His chin tilts, and Sokka sucks in a breath, eyes darting down to his phone again. _That is one gnarly scar._ Red, furrowed, splayed over the boy’s eye and across the whole side of his face. It feels ruder to look now, but Sokka peeks up again, fingers fiddling with a tie on his pack.

The scar is no less gnarly upon a second glance, and Sokka notices the way he pulls up at the tall collar of his bisonwool overcoat, hunching his shoulders so that the collar blocks some of the scar from view. Sokka’s chest feels a little tender — _must not be easy having something that visible._ His scarred eye squints, flicks over the crowd of people, and Sokka catches a flash of the brilliant, luminescent yellow that means it’s an implant. Sokka’s never seen someone so young with a netic before.

His eyes catch Sokka’s, and Sokka wants to look away and pretend he wasn’t just caught staring, but he can’t.

Those eyes, one flashing bright gold and the other a dark brown, look hurriedly back down again, and the guy hunches further. _Oh. Probably thinks I’m staring ‘cause of the…_ Sokka feels guilty, and wishes he could tell the guy he was staring ‘cause of his cool eye. And because he’s cute. On second thought, maybe Sokka should keep that part to himself.

The rail starts pulling into yet another station, so Sokka braces himself against the deceleration and focuses on his hands, worrying the tie of his pack. Maybe he should try to say hi. _No, that’s silly. That only happens in movers._ Well, maybe he should at least explain himself. He doesn’t want the boy to think poorly of him. Maybe they could be friends… _Who am I kidding. He definitely lives in the sky level, there’s no way he’d want to talk to me._ Sokka could hear his dad’s voice, telling him not to judge a book by its cover.

When Sokka looks up again, the boy is gone.


	2. shimmering this way forth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sokka runs into a familiar face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first proper chapter! my plan for this work is starting to come together after many re-outlines and re-writes.

Sokka grunts in frustration, letting the tiny flat head screwdriver clatter from his hand to the counter.

“I told you it wouldn’t work,” Katara calls from the back. Sokka can hear her rummaging around.

He calls over his shoulder, “Hold your ostrich-horses, I’m not giving up yet!”, but lets his forehead fall against the counter, too. The only thing keeping him from really throwing in the towel is pure spite.

Katara emerges from the back storeroom with a chi core in her hands. “Just use this. If it ain’t broke —”

“If everyone thought that way, we’d never invent anything,” Sokka whines into the countertop.

“Fine. Keep beating your head against the wall for all I care,” she says airily, setting the chi core in front of Sokka with a _thunk_. “Call me when you finally give up. I want to say _I told you so_.”

Sokka picks his head up, about to say something flippant back, when the front door to the shop swings open jerkily, followed my a man stumbling in, clutching his eye.

“Sir —” Katara starts, and the man grasps the handle to the door with his free hand, to steady himself. “Are you okay?”

He winces, then grits his teeth. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just can’t see shit with my cybernetic like this. This is a netic clinic, right?”

“Yes, we do —”

He cuts her off, hissing, “Look, I have a splitting headache from this thing. Here, it’s —” he pulls his hand off his eye, revealing a large scar running from his eye up into his temple, and — has Sokka — ?

The man growls again, covering up the eye. “It’s got a processing malfunction, or something — the interface is going fucking bonkers.”

“Okay,” Katara says, slipping into her soothing customer service voice. “What line is it?”

“I think it’s — agh — FN100 series? Sozintech, uplinked. I can’t remember the model number exactly.”

Katara strides toward the back. “It’s okay, that’s all I need to know. Sokka here will show you to our maintenance room.”

Sokka stares at the man. Maybe he has déjà vu? That would explain the sudden feeling that he had seen this strange man before.

“So are you going to help me, or should I just feel my way there myself?” the man grumbles, mouth pressed into a terse line.

That startles Sokka back into action. “Yeah, of course. Sorry about that. This way.”

Sokka leads him down the short hall, opening the door to the maintenance room in a haze. He feels like his head has been rung like a gong. He could _swear_ he’s seen this man before, but where on earth would he have seen a man like _this_?

The strange man sits down on the medical table, still keeping his hand wrapped firmly around his malfunctioning eye. It isn’t strange for Sokka and Katara to see people with netics, including highly specialized ones like eyes and ear implants — they’d even worked on a basic neural interface before. No, what was strange was how divorced this man seemed to be from his surroundings; they kept their shop clean and tidy, but it was by no means the kind of slick, high-gloss clinic this man must be used to going to.

He wore all black, with varying textures: a high-necked sweater of thin, delicately woven knit; trousers that shifted like they were made of water; a long-sleeved, hooded cloak with reflective edging and even, perfectly spaced stitches. The kind of clothes Sokka saw giant, blinking advertisements for, far above his head, and never bought.

“Are you just gonna stand there?” the man says, voice spiny and sharp.

Sokka clears his throat. “Sorry, I just. Have we met?”

The man looks up at him, squinting with his uncovered eye. “I don’t think so.”

Katara knocks on the door, then comes in with a small box of optical parts and a water basin in her hands.

“Okay, so first I’m going to take a look at it, and depending on whether the problem is with the chi-paths or mechanical, either Sokka or I will see if we can help you fix it. Okay?”

He waves a hand tiredly, lying back on the table. “Yeah, sure.”

Sokka hangs back while Katara, as gentle as if she’s dealing with a wild animal, pries off the man’s hand. He grimaces, and she dips her hands into the basin at her side, bringing them up cocooned in glowing water. Katara passes her fingers over his forehead, temple, then eye, moving carefully.

She purses her lips. “I’m guessing this is mechanical, everything with your chi paths seems to be fine. Sokka?”

Katara moves away, and Sokka slips into her place, yanking open a drawer to find… _where are they_ … he slips on his micron gloves, the ones with special wiring to keep his movements steady and precise, and fits his magnification glasses over his head. Eye netics are, relatively speaking, tiny, and complex, and something that required a little more precision than even the sharpest naked eye could offer.

“Do you guys have some painkillers? Just conventional. This headache is killing me,” the man says, and Katara nods, slipping out of the room again.

Sokka peers through his glasses, assessing. It’s not really visible from far away, but up close Sokka can see the central apparatus spinning wildly in its mount, lens focusing and unfocusing. _Probably a run-of-the-mill calibration issue — what kind of incompetent tech put this in?_ Carefully, he unmounts the central apparatus; as soon as it’s detached, it stops spinning, going still, and Sokka sets it aside.

“When did the problem start?” Sokka asks, tinkering with the mount cautiously. It’s clearly an expensive piece, and Sokka doesn’t want to get slapped with a lawsuit for breaking it even further — which, judging from his clothes, this man looks liable to do.

The strange man huffs in frustration. “Like, half an hour ago. I was in the shuttle and it just — totally freaked out. I haven’t gotten a part updated in six months! This is ridiculous.”

Six months — _this should have shown up earlier if it was a calibration issue._ The parts are all top-of-the-line, still shiny and new…

Sokka pokes around further, looking for — there. _The rotor._ Slow and precise, Sokka unscrews the rotor attachments and lifts it out, dropping the tiny buzzing thing in the part salvage drawer. It isn’t everyday he comes across parts this nice, even broken ones.

“You had a malfunctioning rotor,” Sokka says, poking through the box Katara brought in.

The man scoffs. “A _rotor?_ That was all?”

Sokka shrugs. “Probably just a manufacturing error. Happens all the time. ‘Course, I can’t know for sure unless I double-check your uplink ID, but —”

“No,” the man says, curt.

Sokka holds up his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. “I respect that, plenty of people like their IDs to stay private. Either way, I’m replacing the rotor.”

He picks the fanciest rotor they’ve got, but it’s still not quite as finely-tuned as the one Sokka just removed. _He’ll just have to make do like the rest of us,_ Sokka thinks, installing first the rotor, then mounting the central apparatus again.

Katara opens the door again, mid-way through mounting. “I’ve got some salicyclin, is that alright?”

“Yes. Thank you.” _First thank-you we’ve gotten since this asshole walked in._ The man’s voice is relenting, a little, loosening from the vise-grip he walked in with.

Katara goes to leave again, but Sokka stops her, saying, “Ah, wait. I’m almost done.” Once it’s in, it remains still and unfocused — it needs Katara to calibrate it again.

The siblings switch places again; Katara pulls the water to her hands and traces over the strange man’s eye while Sokka busies himself pouring a cup of water.

One by one, the fine-veined chi links connect, and the eye whirs. The lens focuses, unfocuses, then lands somewhere in the middle, syncing up with the biological eye to its left.

“Ugh.” The man closes his eyes, then opens them again, sitting up gingerly.

Sokka holds out the salicyclin and cup of water, and the man silently takes it, gulping down the medicine.

“How’s it feel?” Katara says, then holds up a finger, moving it from his left to his right. “Can you focus on my finger?”

The man obeys, brow still furrowed in discomfort. “Yeah.”

“Okay, good. Sokka, can you check him out?”

“Sure.” Sokka starts cleaning up, putting away his tools, studying the man out of the corner of his eye. He’s a scientist at heart, curious — why would a man like this end up in Sokka and Katara’s shop, of all places?

When he’s ringing up, tallying the cost of parts and labor, Sokka turns it over in his head. He was on the shuttle when it started malfunctioning, so why would it ever let him off at street-level? Wouldn’t there be a clinic nearby, at least at mid-level? Sokka and Katara did good work, he was proud of it, but they weren’t exactly known the whole district over. They had their regulars, and some passers-by, and it paid the rent just fine. Why would this man stumble in _here?_

Sokka tells him the total — on the higher end, because of the part Sokka used — and the man doesn’t even bat an eye, whipping out his wrist and passing it over the cash terminal like he’d done it a million times before.

“Oh, we don’t — we don’t have uplink pay. Do you have a credits key, or hard coin?”

The man stops for a moment. He mutters a “seriously?” under his breath, and Sokka bites down on a snarky remark. He wants to tell this guy to get lost, but _that’s not good customer service_ , as Katara says. The strange man whips out a key ring, rifling through until he gets to a credits key and sticks it in the terminal’s slot.

Sokka gets another wave of déjà vu, after the credits have been transferred and the man pulls his credits key out of the slot: when he yanks his hood up, hunching his shoulders a little. It’s uncanny, really, Sokka’s _had_ to have seen him somewhere —

“Are you sure we haven’t met?” Sokka asks, and the man stops with one hand propping open the door.

He looks back at Sokka for a moment, netic eye glinting brilliant, LED yellow. He opens his mouth, and hesitates, then decides.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

* * *

Katara hurries, hand above her head to bend herself an umbrella. Her socks are still getting wet, but she’ll deal with that later.

The city’s starting to flicker to life again — not that it ever truly really dies at night — the sun just barely finding its way through the narrow alleys between buildings. Between the towering skyscrapers and the thick blanket of clouds that the skyscrapers pierce up into, it’s a dim morning; shadows linger in corners that the bright, neon signs and sallow streetlights can’t quite reach.

A courier whizzes past Katara on their bike, and the sheet of water under its wheels misses Katara by just a hair.

“Watch it!” she hisses, more of a reflex than purposeful. The last thing she needed after the night she’d had was to get soaked in street water. Yeah, she could bend the water out, but dirty water always left a stubborn, filmy residue no matter how thoroughly Katara tried to bend it out.

Almost home. _Stars, the train to the exchange station is long._ Katara knows that makes sense, the city limits are miles upon miles upon _miles_ away, but that doesn’t make it any less grueling to trek all the way out there. _They should put in a high-speed line._

That’ll never happen, though. What’s out there isn’t of much interest to many people in the city — except for a few construction workers, and Katara.

She hurries down Hong Teng Street as the flashing signs of nightclubs flicker off, and the previous night’s stragglers trickle out. Katara thinks she probably looks almost as tired as they do, all smudged liner and bleary eyes, either hunching their shoulders against the rain or wandering around in search of a way up a little higher, where they can hail a shuttle. The shuttles whir overhead, a low background hum that blends with the pattering of rain.

There’s a little food stand, tucked between a fluorescent-lit convenience store and a closed cactus dispensary. Katara stops there, and scoops up the boxes of xiaolongbao as soon as they’re ready; the smell wafts up from the steaming boxes and makes Katara’s stomach clench around nothing.

It’s just a few blocks until Katara finds her building, the place she shares with Suki and Yue, and ducks into the shelter of the exterior stairwell. It’s just concrete, no glass windows to keep out the rain if it really wanted to drive in hard, but it’s enough for Katara to pause and catch her breath.

She stops and leans into the wall. With a tired flick of her wrist, she bends the rainwater out of her hair. She still needs a shower, but bending her hair dry is better than having it plastered against her neck. Katara needs one final check; she pulls out her small, mirrored compact, checking the edges of her face. She licks a thumb and rubs it over a smudge of red and white face paint still hanging on, right next to her ear.

Her apartment is up a few flights of stairs and over a bridge that crosses a neglected courtyard below. An artifact of some landlord, long past, that at least kept up the pretense of maintaining —

Katara’s suddenly knocked to the side and right onto her ass, limbs tangled in someone else’s. They’re a mess of crimson and saffron yellow, groaning.

She pushes them off her roughly. “Oh, come on. My xiaolongbao…” They’re strewn on the ground, soaking up the puddles of grimy rainwater.

The xiaolongbao destroyer picks up their head; he’s bald, tattooed, with a crimson face mask covering his mouth and nose. Wide eyes look at the ruined dumplings from behind a pair of blue aero-glasses.

He drags the face mask down, panting. “I’m _so_ sorry. I was just late for — oh, I ruined your breakfast.”

Katara lets her head roll back, taking deep, calming breaths as she stares at the cement covering above her. _Just my luck, after the night I’ve had._

“I’m Aang.” He alights back on his feet in a puff of air and sticks out his hand.

He’s smiling apologetically, brow furrowed, so earnest-looking that all the heat goes out of Katara’s glare. She takes his hand and he hauls her back up to her feet.

“I’m Katara.” She whips out the water soaking her pants, bending it over the railing and down into the courtyard below.

Now that they’re standing, Katara has to turn her head up to look at the guy; he’s tall and willowy, like many airbenders, but nothing about him is imposing or intimidating. He holds his glider close to his body, and tucks his chin sheepishly.

“Look, I’m really sorry about your breakfast. I’m late for a delivery, and I was rushing, and didn’t see you before —”

“Before you flew right into me? Yeah.”

He tilts his glasses so they sit on his forehead, right over the intricate arrow tattoo. “Can I replace them for you? The delivery can wait.”

Katara puts her hands on her hips, considering him for a moment. “Sure.”

He ends up buying a few for himself, too, and the way he throws himself face-first into the dumplings is so endearing Katara has to look away, just for a little bit.

* * *

Zuko steps off the shuttle into the station bay. People flow out around him, scattering toward their various destinations. He heads toward the interior of the building, dodging passersby, ignoring the siren’s call of the elevators pinging their way down to street-level. Zuko wishes he could ditch work, go put his feet on the ground, lose himself to the anonymity of market crowds. Sadly, he thinks his father might actually, finally kill him if he did that.

He heads for a set of escalators that glide upwards, past a mezzanine dotted with finely groomed shoppers. There’s a little coffee shop, one that Zuko tried once; its gimmick is adding exotic syrupsfrom the Spirit Worlds to perfectly good, regular drinks. Zuko hasn’t tried it again.

The upper level of the mezzanine is broad, centered on a bank of elevators that shoot up and down, beeping placidly when they stop to let off passengers. Zuko slips inside one, pressing the button for the 347th floor. A man next to him with dark green hair raises his eyebrows; Zuko looks away pointedly.

He knows it’s conspicuous. Everyone in the building knows that’s where Sozintech’s new offices are, and that anyone who works above the 300th floor is someone you should think twice before asking about what, exactly, it is that they do. Zuko just leans into the corner of the elevator, staring at the floor counter as it ticks up.

The green-haired man gets off at the 228th floor, sneaking another curious look at Zuko before he leaves. Zuko can’t quite tell if it’s his floor choice, or his eye, or his scar that makes the man’s gaze linger, morbidly long, intrusive. He can never tell.

Zuko gets off the elevator with a craving for caffeine, or something, anything to drag himself to some level of productivity. He passes his wrist over the chip scanner irritably, ignoring the android-receptionist’s amiable, tinny _Good morning!_ as he slinks down the hall. The soles of his shoes clack against the black Pohuai marble flooring, ringing off the bare walls and frosted glass doors.

A little drone zips along, slowing to hover beside Zuko’s head. “Good morning Mr. Sozin. Is there anything I can do to assist you?”

Zuko sighs. “A coffee, or something,” he says, waving his hand.

“Of course, sir. Estimated time of arrival for _coffee_ is three minutes,” the drone warbles, playing Zuko’s irritable _coffee_ back to him.

He pushes open one of the glass doors, ducking into the workshop-office hybrid only to be confronted with Azula, sitting in Zuko’s chair, tapping her nails impatiently on Zuko’s desk.

“You’re late,” she drawls, spinning in the chair so that she’s staring out the window at the low-hanging, heavy clouds.

Zuko glowers at Azula’s back. “By like, fifteen minutes.” He drops his bag unceremoniously on one of his workshop’s tables.

“Like I said, late.” She stays with her back turned. “It wastes my time. I have better things to do than wait around for you to drag yourself in here.”

“What is it, Azula?” Zuko snaps.

She spins around again, palms pressed together, the line of her fingers resting on her lips.

“You haven’t submitted a progress report in three weeks. You know better than this, Zuko.”

He groans. “Look, I’m about to make a breakthrough with the SenLin interfaces. I just need a little more time —”

“Regardless, you should be sending them every week. I don’t understand why this is so hard for you. Are you that lazy?” she taunts, finally standing. Zuko opens his mouth to snipe back, but she interrupts, rolling her eyes. “It’s a rhetorical question, brother. I know it’s because you’re that _incompetent_.”

“Are you kidding me? First thing in the morning, really?” Zuko throws up his hands in exasperation — the drone is back, and takes advantage of the motion to deposit a piping hot coffee in Zuko’s hand.

“Here is your requested _coffee_ , sir,” the drone buzzes, playing back that recording of Zuko sighing _coffee_ once again, before zipping out of the room.

Azula stalks to the door. “Look, I’m just warning you, out of the goodness of my heart — you’re on thin ice.”

She leaves, the barest hint of smoky, spiced perfume following her out.

“ _Goodness of my heart,_ ” Zuko grumbles, plopping himself down in his chair. “Like she even has a heart.”

He takes a drag from the coffee and logs into the Sozintech servers, fingers passing over the flickering touchscreen of his work terminal. The terminal projects an interactive hologram up from the surface, allowing Zuko to navigate to the research and development portal.

The terminal prompts him, “Access restricted. Identity verification required,” and a diagram of an eye pops up. Zuko leans in, turning so that the terminal can scan his biological eye.

“Identity verification completed. Identity: Zuko Sozin. Clearance level: five. Sufficient.”

His project summaries file onto the screen like orderly little soldiers, staring at him unfazed. Zuko stares back, then takes another swig of coffee.

He scrolls through, navigating to the SenLin project file. The objective is the same as yesterday, and the day before: figure out how SenLin managed to streamline their chi connections so well. Zuko pushes his feet against the floor, wheeling over to the workshop table littered with different SenLin netics, all in various states of disassembly.

Zuko picks up the one he’s been working on the most, a long, slim arm implant with its casing half-removed. Inside, Zuko can see the delicate, hair-like chi-connectors, coming together and forking again at evenly-spaced hubs. He’s sure that there was something to be learned there, with the hubs — why else would SenLin put connections where there were usually none?

He concentrates, letting his hand hover over the implant, trying to pass the electricity through from one end of the implant to another. Zuko grits his teeth, furrowing his brow, and then the implant sparks, sending a jolt of electricity up Zuko’s arm. He drops the thing, growling, rubbing his stinging hand.

Zuko cups his face in his hands, groaning in frustration. _Why, why?_ Why couldn’t he have been blessed like Azula, with bending that came so easily? He’d seen her work, interacting with electronics and netics like she was born a part of them, with a touch so precise and delicate that sometimes Zuko swears she’s an android herself. Each time Zuko tried the same, it felt like he was muscling his way through, knocking the electricity around like he was a gemsbok-bull in a china shop.

He doesn’t even know what he’s doing this for in the first place. Sure, he knows the basic goals of his projects, but the broader plan was deliberately kept from Zuko, ever since he’d returned to the fold. His father had never quite trusted him again after the burn, after Zuko had run away to Iroh, after Ozai had said all those things and Zuko had said — no, there wasn’t any point in thinking about that, not at 9:36 in the morning, not when Zuko was apparently on “thin ice” and had better get some results, soon.

It would help if Zuko _knew_ what the point of all of it was, all the errant tasks he was saddled with that seemingly had fuck all to do with each other. _Azula knows, why shouldn’t I?_ He slides back to his work terminal, sipping his coffee, tapping aimlessly around the Sozintech servers.

 _Boring, boring, boring —_ mind-numbing accounting ledgers, various presentation slides, an endless inventory list. All inscrutable, all uninteresting. But… Zuko’s finger hovers over the executive server portal. He knows he won’t get in, but tries anyway.

The portal prompts him for another identity verification, and Zuko obliges. “Identity verification completed. Identity: Zuko Sozin. Clearance level: five. Insufficient.” He huffs. “Clearance level six required for access.”

Zuko wheels back over to the table of netics, and tries to find something that will help him not get fired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know little to nothing about computers or electronics, so please bear with me as i pull absolutely everything regarding those out of my ass

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! let me know how you liked it. it's pretty short, compared to my usual chapter length, but i'm working on fleshing out the overarching story right now so hopefully i'll be updating soon!


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